Collection of impressions after having watched Spider-Man: No Way Home

WARNING: HEAVY SPOILERS AHEAD.

I watched Spider-Man: No Way Home twice today (actually yesterday since it’s 1 AM of the 16th) and these are some random thoughts about the experience in no specific order:

• Favorite spidey movie (Spider-Man 2 has been dethroned).
• So many people crying in the theater, lol.
• Newfound respect for Andrew and Holland.
• “I am something of a scientist myself”, “The power of the Sun in the palm of my hand”…
• MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS TRAILER! A trailer for Doctor Strange 2 played after the credits, there’s Wanda and Strange Supreme from What If…?
• We’re getting Symbiote Spider-Man after all!
• There are two nods to Into the Spider-Verse:
  • One is that Electro says that there’s probably a black Spider-Man in some other universe.
  • But the funniest one is that during Holland and Ock’s fight, Holland keeps saying that he has everything under control while Ock mops the floor with him, which mirrors the first fight between Peter B. Parker and Olivia Octavius.
• The scene where the Multiverse starts cracking open and all the people who know Spider-Men from other universes start appearing is obviously a collection of easter egg Spider-Man characters waiting to be identified like Waldo. For instance, I’m 100% sure I saw the silhouette of Kraven The Hunter, and I also spotted a more comic book-accurate variant of Rhino. There was also a woman but I didn’t manage to identify her. The scene was too quick, only managed to catch those two.
• There are many minor differences between the trailers and the actual movie scenes. Doctor Strange doesn’t say “Scooby Doo this crap”, but “Scooby Doo this shit”; and in the part where Strange says “I’m sorry” and Holland replies “Me too” and steals the box, it doesn’t really go that way, Holland doesn’t reply and the events that unfold are longer. But the biggest difference is Strange’s popular line “Fine, I won’t.” The trailer makes it look like Wong didn’t approve and Strange lied and cast the spell anyway, but no. Strange didn’t lie and didn’t wink, and Wong reluctantly gave his approval but asked Strange not to involve him. Edit: I just rewatched the first trailer and around half of the lines are different. 🙃 It’s like they made that trailer out of discarded footage, lol.
• ALSO, YES, THIS TRAILER WAS ALTERED! The 3 Spider-Men attack in that scene. Andrew kicks Lizard and Tobey faces Electro. When that scene happened I literally yelled “I KNEW IT!”
• There was no Hobgoblin after all. I had the idea that Ned could become the Hobgoblin in this movie, especially since Jacob Batalon said he had lost weight for his role in this film (why else if not to fit in a costume?); but it was never very likely due to the already high number of villains in the story, and at the end it seemed that he just lost weight for personal reasons, lol.
• Venom was in freaking Mexico, hahahaha. Even had a “Mexico” cap. Why the fuck did he end up here? LOL
• That finale was heartbreaking. Holland lost literally everything. He had lost his Uncle Ben since before Civil War, he lost Tony, he lost Aunt May, and ultimately he lost everybody else after the world forgot him and was left completely alone. He’s now officially the one that has had the hardest life out of all Spider-Men. And he has to deal with all of that while being the only one who’s still a teen.
• That feeling when Andrew removed his mask and the theater exploded cheering was awesome. Hadn’t experienced something like that since the portals scene in Endgame. Curiously he was better received than Tobey in the two screenings I went to, lol. His entrance was more epic though. Tobey’s was kind of meh. This’d be one of the complaints I’d have of the movie.
  • I was also apparently the only one who recognized Andrew the moment Ned opened the portal and he was seen in the distance on the street. The rest of people didn’t react, probably thinking this was Holland, but I yelled “That’s Andrew!”, and my friend said “What?”, and I replied “That’s Andrew! That’s the fucking suit he uses in TASM2!”. The audience only reacted until he removed his mask.
  • I love Andrew now after this film. Much respect to the man, I certainly underappreciated him before. I liked how they addressed his unpopularity in the movie, by making him admit that he’s the worst Spider-Man, resignedly calling himself “Peter 3” (with Holland being 1 and Tobey being 2), and Tobey having to give him a motivational speech and repeatedly telling him he’s “amazing”, lol. Also when he hugs the other two and tells them that he loves them and that he always wanted to have brothers. He’s so humble and needy, hahahaha.
• Explaining Sandman’s motives, which from conversations with friends seem to have been unclear: Sandman allied himself with the villains because he didn’t trust Holland. At first he defended Holland from Electro when he thought he was Tobey, but then when he saw that he was in a different universe, that this was not his Peter, that this was some weird reality with magic and then when he was suddenly imprisoned by Strange, all of that confused him and made him paranoid, and he decided that he couldn’t trust anyone. Even though his motives were the same as those of the Spider-Men, he didn’t trust that they were going to do what they claimed and concluded that the only way to be sure was to take the box for himself.
• Special mention to DAREDEVIL. So happy to see the man finally making it to the MCU films, even if his participation ended up being a simple cameo. But this only sets up what’s going to come. Especially after the current events in Hawkeye.
• This was the actual intro!
• About the final fight between Holland and Green Goblin, I never thought I’d see such an emotional and dark moment in a movie from the Holland saga. That part when a bloodlust Peter says “No, I just want to kill you myself” was an extreme turn in his Spider-Man.
  • I also liked how the movie clearly established Green Goblin as Spider-Man’s definitive archenemy, the most evil out of all his villains. He was just insanely cruel and that also was something rare not only for the Holland saga but also for the film side of the MCU in general (the TV shows side, and mainly the Netflix shows, do tend to get this dark).
• Also, yeah, now I agree with having kept Tobey and Andrew’s presence a secret. It wasn’t a marketing move but just so that the fans could savor the moment in the theater. Sometimes I forget that not everything is marketing.
• I was looking at leaked clips of the film as visual support while talking to friends who haven’t watched the film, but I’ll stop doing it now, it’s starting to interfere with my memories of the theater, lol. I remembered now why I don’t usually rewatch movies until long after watching them in the cinema. The memories of the original screening are too precious to defile them. 😒 I only watch them in home media when the memories of the theater start fading away. I didn’t rewatch* Infinity War* and Endgame until this year. I’ll watch No Way Home again next week anyway, so I’ll use that to restore the memories back to how they should be. 😆
• This theory of mine was right. I’m glad that Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus did happen to face off, even if only briefly. Ever since the Raimi saga I had wanted to see who would win between the two.
• Marvel makes a nod to DC in this film. The book Flash wrote about his supposed friendship with Spider-Man is called “Flashpoint”, which is a reference to the DC Comics story arc of the same name and which follows a similar premise to No Way Home, having Flash traveling back in time and ending up meeting variant versions of the Justice League. That book is the source of the movie Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (part of the DCAMU which I love), and it’s also the source of the upcoming The Flash movie with Erza Miller, which similarly to NWH will show Flash meeting the Batman variant from the 90s movies.
  • This is the second time in a row that Marvel makes a reference to DC. This also happens in Eternals when a kid mistakes one of the Eternals for Superman, and when another Eternal is compared to Alfred Pennyworth. Curiously this also means that DC Comics canonically exists in the MCU. 🙃
    • The further implication is ironic, because if DC Comics exists in the MCU, but Marvel doesn’t exist because it’s real, then that means DC has the monopoly in comics in that reality and maybe the DCEU is having success in its theaters.
• Special mention toHolland’s new suit at the end of the movie, whichi is a very important part of the story. It’s a suit he home-made himself, and it’s made of simple fabric like those of the other two Spider-Men, with no incorporated technology besides the web shooters, removing his reliance from Stark tech and symbolizing his newfound independence from Tony. Some people are saying that the design is a combination of the costumes of the other two Spider-Men, although I don’t really see much of a resemblance besides the material. The eyes are still the same as those of his previous costumes (except that they no longer move), and the appearance overall seems to have been taken straight out of his classic comic costume or the 90s animated series. This also is a symbol of him returning to his roots, with No Way Home having served its purpose of a soft reboot for his character.
• Disappointed that this was never addressed, especially because Doctor Strange was literally there. I wonder if there may be some reference in Multiverse of Madness, considering it’s being directed by Sam Raimi. Highly unlikely though. Tell me it’ll be in some deleted clip from NWH.
• Little reflection on Norman Osborn’s words during his initial encounter with Peter at Aunt May’s house: he says “Oscorp is gone, somebody is living in my house”, and then “My son…” and didn’t complete the sentence, leaving unclear whether his son exists or is dead or who knows. My headcanon is that this “somebody [who] lives in my house” is Norman’s MCU variant, and that in his second sentence he meant “My son doesn’t recognize me”, meaning there’s an MCU Harry as well. But it can mean just anything.
• Holland’s actions by reversing the fates of the villains have split the timelines into multiple versions. Now basically only Tobey and Andrew are the ones who returned to the original timelines seen in their movies, but the villains have been sent to alternate timelines where they didn’t die and the history didn’t happen as it was seen in the movies. So now we have a different timeline for each villain, plus the two original timelines Tobey and Andrew were sent to, that has split history into 7 timelines.
  • Imagine Otto’s new timeline. He’s in the harbor grabbing Peter by the neck and refusing to shut down the nuclear reactor, then he disappears in a flash of light, then he returns a second later with a new inhibitor chip and says “Hello, Peter. How are you?” And Peter: “What the fuck just happened?”
• No Way Home is the MCU’s Days of Future Past. A way of restarting the character’s story without doing a full reboot per se, with no new actor or having to erase everything. A new beginning. This fits with Amy Pascal’s statement that NWH was the end of the first trilogy, but that a new trilogy will begin. And I assume that the future installments will no longer feature the “home” in the title, to show that they’re part of a new phase in Holland’s saga.
  • Peter is alone, is more mature, nobody knows his identity, and he has a new suit he made himself which looks just like the classic comic costume. This totally feels like a proper Spider-Man start. And it also feels like Marvel/Sony indirectly admitting that they screwed it up with the characterization they originally gave him, lol.
• I was hoping we’d see the original mask they had made for him for the first Spider-Man movie. It was really terrifying and much more comic book-accurate than the Power Rangers helmet they ended up using.Though it’s said they discarded it precisely because it was too creepy for young audiences. 😒
• Something I’ve thought of is that the events of the film could lead to Harry’s introduction in the MCU. Maybe Peter will meet Harry at the MIT, and since he’s no longer friends with MJ and Ned (probably still not having the courage to approach them and tell them what happened), he may find a new best friend in Harry. Tobey and Andrew never told him what happened with the Harrys of their universes (at least he was never mentioned by name), so he wouldn’t know that Harry becomes the Goblin even after hearing his last name (he only knows that Norman becomes the Goblin, but not his son).
• I wonder if there are no symbiotes in the MCU, or what was the need to have Venom cross universes just to leave a part of his symbiote there (besides Sony being fucking clingy). The symbiotes mythos extend beyond the Spider-Man comics and have roles in other parts of the Marvel universe. The villain of Thor 4, Gorr the God Butcher (portrayed by Christian Bale), is a symbiote user as well, and he even possesses the first and most powerful of all symbiotes, one that grants its host god-level powers. I wonder how’s that going to be depicted in the movie if it’s not going to be with an MCU symbiote.